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Comment

Isn't the purpose of having OpenGL to be able to steer hardware functions of graphic cards?

No.

The purpose of OpenGL is to have a standardized API for developing 3D applications. Hardware acceleration is purely optional.

DirectX is a different beast were you have specific hardware requirements to go with APIs. With OpenGL this is not true. This makes DirectX easier in some aspects, but OpenGL is more universal.

The original purpose of 'hardware acceleration' for OpenGL was to take the parts of the OpenGL API that are slow and accelerate them with hardware functions.

But that is no longer true also.

OpenGL, even with 'hardware acceleration' is almost all software. The difference is that with 'hardware acceleration' the software that makes up the OpenGL libraries and APIs is designed to run on both your main processor and your graphics processor. The graphics processor being more and more general purpose. Your 'OpenGL stack' is just software compiled to use both the CPU and GPU at the same time. More or less. OR at least it's increasingly like that.

The sort of 'fixed function 3D acceleration in hardware' is becoming a increasingly legacy feature among modern hardware. Eventually it will be dead and gone.

Everything is becoming general purpose. Eventually the GPUs will be cores running at 4000mhz right as just another bunch of cores along with your CPU. The biggest limitation right now is memory bandwidth and the solution to that is just to make your main memory REALLY REALLY fast.